


Guilt is the Most Useless Emotion

by IleDeLaNouilleHumide



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Religion, Suicide, mentions of CecilEarl, religious!Cecil, spoilers through cassette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 17:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1478161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IleDeLaNouilleHumide/pseuds/IleDeLaNouilleHumide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil has feelings about Dana going missing. Carlos might be a little less than supportive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt is the Most Useless Emotion

**Author's Note:**

> Hey this is my first fic on this site! Wow! Please be kind!

The hijab was pink, with a floral print. Cecil hadn't noticed it the first time, when he’d first seen it, over his mother’s dark hair, hair so straight and so unlike his own. It was new, and he hadn't noticed and he kicked himself later for it, because it stuck behind his eyes only after the fact. His dreams were plastered with the colors of her hijabs, almost always dark, almost always solid, and he knew he should’ve noticed that hijab when it was worn, for the first time. 

After he had washed and aired them, and made sure they were all laid out, he had removed that one, out to the side, so Dana wouldn't feel the need to choose it. But of course she gravitated towards it, hands led by some ghost, and looked at him with such questioning eyes. Usually Dana, with her nails painted in the break room in the nail colors Cecil got from his mother’s hijabs, would point and demand and take the space she was due. She sensed she was not due this hijab. 

He tried to tell her, like he tried to tell her about the internship, that it was a bad idea, it was bad luck, there was a stench of death around it. If he gave her that hijab, like he gave her the internship, her mother would look at him with that thin mouth, would squint her eyes and cross her arms and tap her food and ooze disappointment at him. She would take him away, to the side, to make him bend to listen to her complaints, to hiss in his ear about her daughter and her safety and his duty. 

But Dana had been led to that hijab as she was led to the radio station, and all the science Cecil had been absorbing from Carlos told him it would be all right, there were no such things as curses or death hanging around an internship or a hijab or even the silver ring on his thumb from the dead boyfriend he hadn’t let go of. Or he had, and it was that guilt ingrained in silver he carried with him. If he could wear that hijab always, he would, he would carry with himself that obliviousness to pain. 

But Dana had wanted it, and really, whatever Dana wanted from Cecil, Dana got. He had let her get that internship, despite her mother’s protests. He had stood between Dana and that opposition, he had promised her mother, had said he’d watch out for her and care for her so she wouldn't be chewed out over dinner. At first, he had worried her mother would recognize the hijab for what it was, for what he was doing. But he would take that, he would accept stern looks from across the mosque parking lot, guilt trips over dinners, so he could absorb the pain and convert it, take it on so Dana wouldn't have to. 

The day she disappeared, she went missing slathered in Cecil’s guilt. 

Publicly he had to keep up hope, keep face, cook dinner for Dana’s family and allow her mother’s tears to stain his shirt. He had to drive her brother to boy scouts, help him with his homework, clean up the house until Dana’s mother pulled herself together and decided to manage her household on her own. The night she thanked Cecil was the night he went home to vent his true feelings to Carlos. 

He tried to impress upon him that she had gone missing in his mother’s hijab, which had just made Carlos confused over Cecil’s newfound materialism. But it was the last one, the last one she ever wore, and he hadn’t wanted to let her wear it, but she had wanted it, and so he had swallowed his misgivings and let her. Carlos had grown upset with him, then, while they sat on the couch after dinner. Give her more credit, Cecil, she’s not helpless- you should treat women better. Carlos had also grown angry over Cecil’s willingness to let their hypothetical future daughter wear a hijab. But Carlos didn’t understand, Cecil pleaded, it was cursed and bad and he really should’ve kept that sort of thing to himself, not gone draping it over one of the most precious people in his life. 

No, it wasn't cursed, Carlos told him, in the same tone he used to tell him mountains were real and mirrors couldn't hurt him. It was a tone that made Cecil want to mumble apologies and stare at the floorboards for the rest of his life. Was anything worth getting upset over anymore? Mirrors didn't need to cause vomit inducing panic attacks? Mountains didn't deserve severe skepticism? Dana going missing was nothing to titter about? Was Cecil not worth comforting anymore? Were his emotions too outrageous to even warrant shelving factual adherence to deal with? 

Later, in the morning, Cecil would apologize for his outburst in a way that made himself seem irrational and hysterical and Carlos as cool, calm, and correct as ever. It was the sort of apology Carlos could accept without question, the sort that didn't send him quibbling about semantics and accuracy, dragging up the whole argument again. Cecil didn't care who was right or wrong, he didn’t care if Carlos thought he was over dramatic and sexist. He cared if they were arguing, and he’d learned over the course of the relationship, how to end an argument and keep everyone happy. Cecil knew how to keep everyone happy but himself. 

Carlos had told him taboos around mirrors originated regarding the original substantial cost of a mirror. Bad luck came from breaking something that took seven years to buy, not from any supernatural powers about mirrors. Carlos had told him he had no reason to be terrified by mirrors, that mirrors couldn't hurt him, that it was illogical. But by that logic Cecil had no reason to feel his mother’s dead lips on his, to feel her deflated lungs behind her cold chest, to feel his arms wrapping around her and hugging her naked body close at the center of scattered shards of mirror. She was gone, she was dead, deceased, buried facing Mecca, on her side, not on her back as he had found her, not naked, as he had found her. Cecil hadn’t told Carlos she had known what she was doing because she could see the blood both on her and reflected in the mirror shards against her wrists, because the days he felt he could manage that discussion and the days he felt he wasn't imposing on Carlos had yet to coincide.

And there were no such things as curses.


End file.
